


Case 207: The Adventure Of The Prejudiced Professor (1903)

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 221B [266]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Edwardian, Bigotry & Prejudice, Destiel - Freeform, Discrimination, Johnlock - Freeform, Justice, M/M, Military, Self-Esteem Issues, Social Justice, Tattoos, Theatre, University, Untold Cases of Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-14 08:58:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18049496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: ֍ A timorous student approaches Mr. Sherlock Holmes with an odd little problem; they keep getting low marks from one of their professors. The answer, as so often, lies in past misdeeds leading to present ones.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vitabear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vitabear/gifts).



_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

This tale began at the start of the month of March, with a year and a half still separating us from retirement and that cottage on the Downs. I was seriously considering getting a clock made that could count down every second of that time, just to remind us both that it was getting ever closer. But before we did there was an event which reminded me that relationships, like plants, need constant attention.

John and I had been to see a play shortly after finishing a small and uninteresting case down in the docks. The play concerned the private life and entanglements of a circus strongman and I frankly thought it unbecoming of all those Edwardian 'ladies' to leer at the main actor just because he spent most of the play wearing a skimpy pair of leopard-print shorts and nothing else. Although it did remind me of a similar item of apparel we had at home that had not been used for far too long. Hmm....

We waited in our box for the crowds to clear before venturing out, and I noted that John was unusually thoughtful despite the pie that I had smuggled in for him. There was a whole slice left that he had not even touched yet. Something was wrong.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Mr. Sorbeaux looked so fine tonight”, he sighed. “It just makes me feel every one of my years.”

Oh, that again. John had never liked the fact that he had two and a half years on me in age, but I had noted that when he 'rounded a decade' before me he seemed to become that little bit more depressed. I would only reach my fifties days before we moved to our wonderful cottage in the country. And to cap it all my annoying brother Gaillard had called round the other day and had joked about me trading John in for a younger model.

I wondered whether to send a card to his hospital or not. No. I would arrange for one of the Coven – I meant Mother's Writing Circle – to visit him and read some of their stories to him while he was immobile. And I would have his secret stashes of sweets around the family home all removed.

“That sailor that we just helped”, I said. “He said that he knows someone who runs a tattoo parlour.”

He looked at me in confusion.

“Yes”, he said warily. “What of it?”

“We should go there”, I said. “Rings are all very well but I think we should have something permanent. You will always be in my heart, John, and I think that it is time you were on my body.”

Seriously, that quivering lip was going to get him ravished in a theatre box of he was not careful!

֍

We made it out of the box barely half an hour later, fortunately before anyone came to inquire why we were still there. The tattoo parlour looked safe enough and after some thought we decided to go for each other's initials to be inked on our ankles. Then it was home and to questioning looks from Mrs. Lindberg when she saw that we were not wearing socks. Although bearing in mind our normal behaviour in her home... ahem!

֍

Our next case arose out of a bespectacled young gentleman who visited Baker Street on St. David's Day. I did not have to have my knowledge of human nature to know that he was both nervous and unhappy, let alone the fact that he sat down, fiddled with his spectacles and stared at us nervously.

“We may be able to help you”, I said carefully, “but even Mr. Sherlock Holmes needs at least _some_ information before he helps a struggling and very worried student down from the Midlands for the day.”

Our visitor blinked in shock.

“You have a pale green and rather worn railway ticket in your hand”, I said. “Presumably you would not have walked all the way from Paddington with it still in your hand, so you fidgeted with it while your card was being sent up, hence you are both worried and also financially straitened otherwise you would have taken a cab and avoided the 'shower' that has been going on for nearly an hour now. That colour of ticket is unique to trains on the Great Western line to Birmingham, and that suggests either prudence and/or financial straits as you could have been here faster by taking the London & North Western line into Euston. The latter is inferred by the fact you are very clearly a student; the wear on your fingers denotes many hours spent holding a pen and you have a cheap though serviceable pair of spectacles.”

He took a deep breath and finally spoke.

“My name is Edred Hawkins”, he said. “I do indeed attend Birmingham University and live in a place called Himley, some miles west of the city.”

“Are you General Hawkins' son?” John asked. “I know that he comes from Staffordshire.”

Our visitor blushed.

“I am the middle of his three sons”, he said. “My elder brother Edgar married recently and has been blessed with a son already, and my younger brother Edward is engaged to a girl from Bridgnorth, which lies not far west of us but in Shropshire. Both wish to follow Father into the military but I do not.”

And therein lies part of the problem, I thought but did not say.

“Pray continue”, I said.

“I am studying medicine at the University”, the young fellow said, “and Father and I have already had a disagreement as he wanted me to become an army doctor. But anything to do with guns terrifies me and I refused. I think that he did not wish to fund my University course but Mother told him that he had to. And my first year was wonderful – until I ran into Mistress Caulke.”

“Mistress?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“She says that 'Miss' is old-fashioned and that she will never marry”, the young fellow said, “for which the gentlemen of the West Midlands should in my opinion be making extra donations in church! Unfortunately one condition that Father insisted on for my attending the place was that I take a parallel general studies course which I have to pass. I had not thought that that would be a problem but the two essays that I have submitted to Mistress Caulke so far were both failed.”

I looked at him carefully.

“Do you still have those essays?” I asked.

“They are in my rooms at college”, he said. “With Father being the way that he is I live in Monday to Friday and go home most weekends. Fortunately he is often out with his army friends then so we rarely meet. But if I fail this course I will have to quit the medical one.”

“I would like you to forward those essays to me by registered post as soon as possible”, I said. “I can arrange to get them assessed anonymously by certain professors to see what they think of them.”

“You see”, he said leaning forward, “I think that it is because of my name.”

I stared at him in confusion.

“This woman does not like people called Edred?” I asked. He smiled and shook his head.

“Mistress Caulke has a bee in her bonnet about the slave trade”, he said. “And one of the early men associated with that was the famous Sir John Hawkins. We are only very distantly related to him and she very obviously does not like me; I get all the difficult questions in class but she never chooses me for any of the easy ones. Indeed she seems to dislike all the male students; we have all noticed that the two female students get much easier questions and higher marks. And she often sounds off about the evil business even if it is not what she is meant to be teaching.”

“She sounds a rather unpleasant personage”, I said. “If we are to do anything about her then we must persuade the college to co-operate, and that they will only do if they know that there is wrongful activity on her part. If you forward me those essays as soon as you get home sir, I will have them assessed to see if she is indeed discriminating against you. Then we can go from there.”

“But is there anything that can actually be done?” he asked.

“There is”, I said. “When is your next essay due in, may I ask?”

“Two weeks from now”, he said. “It is almost done; I just need to check through for spellings and grammar.”

““We shall move well before then”, I promised him. “Be of good cheer, sir. We shall take this case.”

֍


	2. Chapter 2

“I have a solution.”

I looked across at Miss Charlotta Bradbury, who had just finished off the jam cream finger that had just happened to have been on her side of the cake-stand. She was almost as bad as dear Henriksen, who incredibly had visited London last month on one of Mrs. Lindberg's baking-days. Honestly, John was right when he said that the fellow had some sort of cake-detection device in that polished dome of his!

“To the problem of Mistress Caulke?” I asked.

“Yes”, she said. “But I doubt that you will allow me to shoot her worse luck, so more indirect methods will have to do.”

“You sound as if you knew of her already?” I asked. She nodded.

“She tried to assault a journalist who was covering a protest that she was at”, she said. “Fellow was one of my contacts in the Midlands but she wanted some of her fellow whiners to set on him. He managed to run off but I have no time for people who act like that. Her treating her own students like that does not surprise me in the least.”

“What do you suggest?” I said. She grinned evilly.

“Let her show her true colours!”

֍

Mr. Hawkins had his essays reach me the very next day and I subsequently had them assessed by five professors who I knew specialized in the subject. All five said that the essays were well-written and three said that the first was bordering on earning a distinction in their opinion. They were kind enough to put their findings into writing so with that John and I set off for Birmingham the following Monday.

The university was, I thought, a rather grim building, designed by someone who had clearly had shares in a brick company and had wanted to make the most of the opportunity. Mistress Caulke was teaching Mr. Hawkins' class the session before lunch and I fully intended to be there to witness it. The day-to-day running of the institution fell to the chancellor, a Mr. Corbett Newman and we had an appointment with him not long before what would be one of Mistress Caulke's more memorable classes if I had anything to do with it. He welcomed us and asked why we were here.

“I was undertaking an investigation into another matter”, I said, “which of course I cannot divulge as it concerns certain sensitive diplomatic elements, when I became aware of something odd happening at this institution. One of your professors was deliberately marking down a student not because his work was inferior but because she disapproved of his ancestry. As someone whose own forebears are of varying quality I took an interest, and found that this was indeed the case.”

The chancellor looked at me dubiously.

“You have evidence for this?” he asked.

I handed him the summary sheet.

“Mistress Melicent Caulke marked two essays of one of her students as failed”, I said. “I looked through them myself and thought them excellent, but history is a weak area of mine so I sent them to five professors that I know in London. I should add that they only knew that I wanted an honest opinion on them, not whether I wanted good or ill. All five passed both essays easily and three said that they considered the first one particularly good.”

“I am sure that that lady would never discriminate against a student”, the chancellor said firmly. 

I looked hard at him. He visibly quailed.

“It is right and proper that women should be given the same opportunities as men in as many fields as possible”, I said slowly. “Teaching is one such. However, when this scandal reaches the newspapers.....”

“The newspapers?” the chancellor said, clearly horrified. I nodded.

“The evidence seems incontrovertible”, I said. “However I see that Mistress Caulke is teaching shortly, so I think that as there is a public gallery I shall sit in and observe. If I find that she is treating students the way it seems, then the _'Times'_ will surely be asking if she is only being protected because of her gender rather than any true teaching abilities.”

“I am sure that she is doing no such thing”, the chancellor said defensively, although I could hear the doubt in his voice. “I shall watch with you.”

“I doubt that she will do anything if she sees you there”, I said, although I knew his answer. And I was right.

“That is not a problem”, he said. “The public gallery is fronted with some of that clever one-way glass so that neither the professors nor the students become distracted. Let us go!”

֍

The students were all ready when we reached the hall and sat behind what looked like smoked glass. Mistress Caulke was already at the front, a red-headed (well, her hair had been dyed some colour that had presumably meant to have been red) and frankly ugly female of about forty years of age with a sharp expression and an attitude so wide I was amazed that she had made it through the door.

The lesson began and all went well until the woman invited questions. A young blond student raised his hand.

“I do not understand why we are not learning about all the lives lost by British sailors in eliminating the slave trade”, he said. “That has been going on for nearly a century now.”

“Shut up you silly fool!” the professor said rudely. “We do not have time for trifles.”

The student reeled back from her anger. I could feel the shock of the poor chancellor next to me.

“My father served on one of those ships”, the student said hotly, “and my uncle died on another. He gave his life to end this evil business. _Trifles?”_

“Both liars”, the professor said dismissively. “Next?”

A tall dark-haired student rose to his feet.

“You come from America, Miss”, he said. “How come we never do anything about Americans and the slave trade?”

She gave him a murderous look. I was frankly glad that I was a long way away and behind a partition.

“If you ever say 'Miss' to me again you can wave goodbye to your next pass!” she said angrily. “And my course, my decision.”

“But the University decides.....” the fellow began.

“You just failed your next essay!” she sneered. “Next?”

I could feel the horror emanating from the chancellor beside me. Mr. Hawkins stood up.

“I had my last two essays re-marked by _real_ professors”, he said angrily, “and they passed them both. How many other people here have failed and think they should have their work looked at by someone who actually knows what they are doing?”

A whole host of students immediately raised their hands. About the only two who did not were, I noted, the two female students.

“You vile piece of filth!” Mistress Caulke shrieked marching up to him. “You think someone as clever as _me_ should be told what to do by a whelp like _you?_ Never!”

And with that she slapped him clean across the face. I was hard put to suppress a smile; let the harridan try to talk her way out of this one!

֍

Mistress Melicent Caulke left the university that same day, though somewhat later than my two actor friends did having been well paid for their few minutes' work. The university agreed that in the circumstances all work previously marked by the woman should be not only reassessed but, in view of it being the institution's fault for employing her in the first place, everyone would be guaranteed a pass at least. Or, as I told the chancellor, who knew what else might come out in the newspapers?

A lot came out all right on our train back to London when John found that I had packed my teacher's cloak into his bag and that I fully intended to discipline my own errant student so that he behaved better in future. Even if he had to have a long sit-down on Platform Six of Euston Station before he could make it to what turned out to be a very painful cab ride back to Baker Street and some intense cud.... manly embracing.

“And shut up!” he whispered as I held him. I just sniggered and kissed him until he stopped pouting. Which coincidentally was exactly when the pie that I had ordered from his favourite shop near Paddington Station arrived.

Eighteen months to go.

֍


End file.
